Till the Next Time We Say Goodbye
by melissaisdown
Summary: They met in a crowed hotel bar. Two strangers, one night. AU. House/Cuddy
1. It's Only Rock and Roll

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Notes: Title from a Rolling Stones song again. Think I could be making a theme of it. This is AU but alludes to many canonical events and gradually becomes a what if ––– fic. Also an attempt at smut turned sentimental.

Thanks for reading. Reviews rock.

**Till the Next Time We Say Goodbye**

The hotel lobby was too quiet, her blood too still.

Every conference Cuddy attended acted only as a reminder of how far she'd come professionally at the expense of so much personally. Other women brought their husbands, displayed wallets full of family portraits, bragged about the cures their kindergartener would discover by sixth grade.

She had none of that, only a title and a burden and another night alone to face. Unwilling to admit such hollow defeat, she inched her skirt up, shed her suit jacket and strode into the hotel bar.

The instant she walked in he wanted her. Searching for a seat amid the din of meaningless conversation, she saw him, staring at her penetrative and predatory in the semi darkness. The shadows were cast sharp across his face, turning his features to monochromatic stone, but the erosion was there, at the corner of his eye, where a highlight shone like a brand over his left cheek.

An empty seat beside him and she knew the perils of sitting. The danger she needed though, to sever all the strings and forget who she was. Fearing his infatuation would dissolve if she opened her mouth, Cuddy omitted an introduction. She tapped her nails against the polished mahogany counter and considered getting what she always gets, a cabernet. This time she let his brooding presence change her mind.

"Gin and tonic," she ordered, like a dare. Then the drink was mixed and in front of her, and the specter at her side swayed close, covering her hand with his before she could pay and handing the bartender cash.

His palm pinned hers long enough to make her sweat, too long to bear looking him in the eyes. It was summer and he was sweating too. The focal point lower, she saw a dark sheen along his unshaved upper lip. It was a tell. Maybe he wanted this as much as her. Maybe he wanted it more.

Since she refused to look at him, the stranger's eyes darted lower, examining her necklace. A silver chain was dangling just above cleavage deep enough to bury himself alive in.

She caught him ogling and her eyes tried to meet his, mock confrontational. But he kept gazing at the jewelry caught and distracting on her damp chest, a scarlet flush spreading. The low cut blouse was invitation and he saw she needed the contact and he couldn't resist. He reached for the necklace, peeling it away from her skin. His knuckles brushed low enough to raise goosebumps and his face bowed forward to savor the reaction. Then he crooked a finger, letting the necklace drop, and grazed the illuminated line along her jaw, sweeping a strand of hair away from her face. She was beaming.

When his touch retreated every intention she had of eloquently sipping her drink was abandoned. Cuddy downed all but the ice of the gin and tonic, determined to blur the edges of reality, and make tonight different.

She was grappling for a way to extract starcrossed ardor from this scenario––picking up a stranger in a bar––a tall, jetlagged, attractive stranger. She wanted to start this. If the initiative was hers, she had control.

A couple cramped themselves into the space on the other side of her looming possibility. He inched closer to her, nonchalantly resting his right hand high on her bare thigh. His thumb stroked under her skirt and both felt all the moisture and humidity concentrate to the gap above his curved fingers.

Cuddy clutched to the chair, the tension tightening every muscle in her body. She raised her glass to her lips, trying to sustain the tease, letting what there was of melting ice slow the simmer. Her extemporized escort raised his left hand and jerked his neck, ordering her another. Music blared. A band had begun. The place was getting crowded. It's only rock and roll he wanted to say, begging that the noise and people wouldn't drive her away. Before he could complete the thought, someone squeezed in, waving for a beer and forcing him to stand and hover above her. She could smell him: sweat and scotch and aftershave.

She sensed he wanted to say something but he just turned and reticently finished his drink. It was then she thought she saw an anomaly, a glint in his eye more recognizable than lust.

Wet lips leaned in and he breathed by her ear, his beard brushing along her cheek. He ended the overture with the faintest vestige of a kiss at he corner of her mouth. His hand ran down her arm and a piano played.

With his palm pressed to hers again, Cuddy's heart screamed to run away, run away with him and never look back.

She let him let go and walk away an undecipherable unknown.

But in her hand he left something behind.


	2. A Sin and a Lie

_**a sin and a lie**_

What he put in her hand was his room key, the magnetic strip facing up; she turned it over to see his room number. 1009. Nine floors from what she needed, Cuddy sipped her second drink, alone again, trying to breathe even. The thrill of what just happened, wordless and indescribable, coursed through her unabated by the alcohol. Now she had a choice.

She should have been reluctant to shed her scruples, and ignore logic. The zipless fuck is a fantasy, unattainable. She told herself no one night is without consequences, completely devoid of guilt or remorse, or worse, hope. Another part of her psyche was determined to argue the counterpoint, telling her he might be the perfect stranger and reminding that her flight didn't leave till noon the next day.

After a few minutes of tearing her conscience in two, Cuddy shouldered her purse and stood, feeling sixteen and tipsy and still holding his key. Her doubts rose in the elevator, on the way to his room. The stakes were inexorably set. Anonymity, brevity, a single desperate attempt at ecstasy could cost her everything.

The scope of the risk didn't near the weight of what she already regretted. For too long she'd demoted connections and affection, sacrificed pleasure for success. She had to change, she had to change something.

The numbers on the doors descended until she found his. A nervous knock, she closed her eyes and held her breath. A beat and she remembered she had the key. She was about to unlock it when the door opened, slowly revealing the man she met downstairs. Lips parted, eyes wide, she froze.

Reading her reluctance, he stepped aside. Cuddy's stomach fluttered, empty except for the liquor landing acrid and all at once. She let herself in, crossing a line and not knowing if she could ever go back.

The room was brighter than the bar and she could see his expression etched with the same impressed disbelief as hers. His eyes were honest, discerning. He looked more curious than seductive. It took every ounce of self restraint to not start a conversation.

They were standing close after he locked the door. He was about to sardonically ask whether he should hang the Do Not Disturb sign when she closed the space between them and kissed him. The impulse was clumsy, she stepped on his toes, pressed her palm against his chest hard, as if she were trying to hold on and push away at the same time.

Seconds into the kiss he opened his eyes. Cuddy was lost. Her mouth opened gradually under his, and her hands rose tentatively, remembering, as if this was her first kiss in so long that she'd forgotten what desire tasted like on someone else's lips.

He knew she wasn't the type to do this. The tailored jacket, the conservative pencil skirt, the expensive perfume. She was gorgeous, but the aura of inexperience with such casual encounters was unmistakable. He knew he didn't deserve her and, sliding his hand down her back, wondered if she knew it too.

When their lips parted he was still holding her. Cuddy was daunted by herself, all confidence and indiscretion, breathless. They kissed again, soft and deeper and unexpectedly intimate. A strong arm wrapped around her waist, lifting her off her feet and out of her shoes. Like dancers confusing their choreography they moved with each other, clasped hands and closed eyes and too determined to disconnect.

Barefoot, stumbling backwards, she combed her fingers through his touseled hair and bit his lip when her ankles met the bed frame. The absolute vertigo of her want pulled her down. She couldn't gauge his arousal, except from the damp diamond on the center of his tshirt she felt as he leaned in, his hands ringing around and behind her neck to unhook her necklace. A muffled encouraging hint in her ear and she lay back on the bed.

The dimmer switch was just out of reach and they both felt a dangerous sort of loneliness when he stepped away to adjust it, leaving enough light so that Cuddy could see a grey blue halo gaussian around his silhouette.

Returning, he gently surrounded her. Braced on his elbows, his heaving chest crushed her breasts with every labored breath. She could feel his heart pounding as he scored porcelain with the scrape of stubble. His mouth was on her temple, her chin, her neck. When she finally kissed him he opened his eyes and she realized that despite every reason she shouldn't, she trusted this stranger.

It was an epiphany against all odds. The nameless fear that precedes all emotions, like a roll of thunder before a midsummer storm, was missing. The portent of imminent shame, of things never being the same, never came. There was only the warmth of his body dissolving into hers, and the burning exploration reminiscent of amorous adolescents too eager to talk or take their time.

His tongue in her mouth smoldered and turned liquid and all Cuddy could think was that there was too much between them. Her pleading consent was a noise caught in the back of her throat and he reacted by unbuttoning her blouse, impatient, the sharp grind of pelvises the perfect kind of painful.

Exposed, she whimpered at first contact, his abrasive grin grazing her cleavage. He used his teeth to slip the straps from her shoulder and when the bra was off their next kiss was a question. He gave her one last chance to change her mind. She answered by rolling her hips against the hard swell of denim to hear him sigh relieved by the unlikely balance of lust and luck. Buried in the crevice between breasts, his tongue swam, skidding to trace each nipple. Even her sweat was sweet. He wanted to say it, but the silence was too perfect to break. His kisses trailed down, mapping her ribs, relaxing the knot in her stomach. She gasped when he reached her skirt, unzipping it carefully and tugging it away.

Satin or silk, her panties were sophisticated and he smiled, less than surprised as he slid them off. With the last shred of discretion thrown into the corner of the room, she sank deeper into the moment and the minutes, glimpsing a smattering of dark blonde hair on his chest as her nameless accomplice in this overdue crime took off his tshirt.

Calculatingly, he spread her dripping lips, pausing a beat to blow cold air across the firm nub of flesh at the apex of Cuddy's legs. The long thorough kiss he pressed to her clit ended with a flick of his tongue. She shuddered, stiffened, waited.

The force jarred her when he sucked it into his mouth, the pressure so right it seemed unreal. Half involuntary, she began to buck against his face, her hands balling into fists. He had fingers inside her, more presence than probing, but it was his mouth making her melt. She tried to shift, because he was a fraction of an inch from making her come apart completely but he was too stubborn to budge and after another minute of not moving she was keening. How could a stranger know her better than she knows herself? She could do little more than writhe helpless beneath him, her arms draped above her head, knowing that if she reached out and touched him she'd never let go.

When she was at the cusp, he held her there––she knew it because the room was reduced to his curling knuckles, his scorching breath every time his mouth balked and the culminating tension dangerously close to uncoiling.

Then the world was collapsing and fragmenting and she wanted to scream but whose name does she cry out and before she could piece together enough consonants to ask him, fluid gushed and trickled down the thin bare slant of her thigh. He was doused in the bittersweetness, tupelo and tang, from nose to chin and even after she stopped moving he still strummed her like an instrument, pulling the last dregs of spasms out of her because he could.

The slope of his cheekbone rested against the inside of her knee a moment, letting her come back to him. The afterglow gleamed diffuse and he stood, taking off his jeans and settling on his back beside her. Once she caught her breath, Cuddy craned her neck to kiss him. He brushed her damp tendrils behind an ear. The August twilight fading through venetian blinds shone below his brow. She saw some great pain barricaded behind his eyes and didn't know if this was him severing his hand to rid himself of the hurt he was holding onto.

Turning on her side to face him, her nail drew a line down his chest, part consolation, part temptation––a teasing palm hung at the waistband of his boxerbriefs. She let it drift lower, massaging subtle but enough to elicit a hiss that had him shoving them off his hips.

A beat. Motionless, he faced her. It was easy to want this. Terrifying to want it this badly. He wanted to disintegrate in her arms, die and be reborn and not remember what a mess he'd made of this life in the next. The earnest friction as his hand glided down her spine seemed to convey how receptive he was to a reversal of fortune.

All at once he lifted her leg over his, and rolled to mount her missionary, more than ready to plunge in furious and forget everything else. But before he could, she turned with surprising strength and straddled him. The arrhythmia she induced made him seep and Cuddy felt it, the leaking heat a guarantee that she was still stellar at more than administration.

For an instant she hoped he had a condom, or maybe she didn't. How long had it been since it was skin against skin. And he was primed, pulsing incessant with the promise of penetration.

They held their breath paralyzed that way, trying to synchronize their suffocation from pleasure. She shifted, spreading the pool of lust between their bodies. Then she lifted herself, graceful, and eased him in unbearably slow, wanting it to be perfect because she needed him to be there forever. He jutted accidentally, like a reflex and bumped her cervix. The impulse to apologize was smothered by the searing clench as her muscles fluttered and seized him. His hands gripped her hips and stilled her because if she made one false move it was over, and all he wanted was for this to last.

Summer flickered, caroming from the corner of the window sill to the edge of the headboard and bled into their shadows, cast dim against the beige wall. The physiology of passion––all the chemicals coursing through their blood, heart rate and blood pressure and synapses, constriction and dilation––every ounce of trite biology––transmuted into palpable want.

Cuddy rose and fell experimentally and his sharp intake of air warned her, so she relented, lowering herself languid astride him. The tenderness was overwhelming when his hand caressed across her shoulderblade, resting at the small of her back. The absolute sense of possession was a lie. Her tongue split the line of his lips before she kissed him rough and desperate to know the truth.

How easy the emptiness vanished. The vacancy inside her, having never found the one, the hollow chasm since he lost the one, and this unlikely connection as closure let the urgency evaporate. She was stroking his jaw and he was seeing through her and neither knew how instant gratification had become slow release only that one night would leave it incomplete.

The pivot of his hips punctured her pause button and Cuddy met each blunt thrust, driving him so deep the thought of separating seemed impossible. The length of him stretching her was redemption; even if this meant nothing, it meant everything.

Letting her have control, his head sank into the pillow while she covered him with sloppy wet kisses, setting a pace. Slow and deliberate she rocked, arching her back to let him lap at her breasts and pirouetting once to hear him sigh sharp, inching closer to the precipice.

The physics of carnal momentum meant that climax was the finish line, inescapably followed by sudden deceleration––overdrive to slamming on the brakes. Neither wanted this to end so they fought, fisting sheets and pulling hair, resisting becoming two people again.

A wash of haze in the rushing night, their bodies swayed defiant, melding into the mattress in a vain struggle for permanence. Sweat beaded and ran down his face and Cuddy wiped it away, kissing his closed eyes and neck, sinking her teeth into his shoulder, holding on and being held until each shallow thrust became enough.

When they finally let go into the cathartic suffusion, her squeezing, him spilling, the simultaneity never stopped. He bucked erratic, ricocheting bright hot oblivion and she clung to him, moaning gratitude for the torrent of fleeting emotions, all consuming and unstoppable, the chase after a last chance captured.

Echoes of her orgasm had her trembling; the memory of it would always make her weak. They savored the aftermath, lying tangled and sticky and spent. Cuddy tried to roll off, but his arms were locked. She should have panicked. Instead her body sighed in relief and soon he drowsed off, still clutching her tenaciously.

Cuddy woke when the sky was the color of his eyes; the moon had yet to set. He was behind her with his arm slung heavy across her hip and his breath cool against her ear. He throbbed, wedged solid in the space between them. Was he awake, she wondered, or insatiable even asleep? She considered crawling down between his legs and waking him so that the first thing he saw this morning would be her mouth engulfing him entirely.

Except she liked the embrace, it had been too long since she shared a bed. And the sooner she woke him the sooner this inadvertent comfort would end. The AC had her bare feet cold, so she slid them between his, trying to ignore the blisters, the consequences, the approaching end of this tryst. She had been walking since she got here, from lecture to luncheon, all business and never pleasure until now. Cuddy yawned, yearning to stay this way. She wanted to be with him again and knew she wasn't supposed to want it. She had to get back to her room, pack and checkout, catch her flight. So she stood, seeing all the scarlet blotches her lipstick had painted over his body, and stifled some garbled sound, wanting to laugh and cry at the sight.

He woke later, stretching his hand out listlessly over the bedspread and finding only the imprint where she had slept. It was still warm. The soft murmur of voices in the adjacent room, newlyweds he deduced, reminded him what he'd never have and already missed.

There was no goodbye, no goodbye kiss.


	3. Continental Drift

**Please forgive any medical mistakes in the chapter. Also, If you read this (and didn't hate it) please comment. Feel free to shout 'encore, encore!' Or suggest another AU prompt or Stones song to translate into a House/Cuddy narrative. This sort of fic helps me over hurdles when composing (or revising) orig fic, and sometimes I test metaphors and ideas this way, sometimes I just distract myself but I'm always looking for feedback. **

**Thanks for reading!**

_**-----------**_

A week after their one night, a patient came into the clinic complaining of leg pain. Kismet or cruelty or both, Cuddy was handed his chart. The name she ignored, the symptom seemed simple. Until she opened the exam room door.

Fairway fell from his Nike cleats, dangling a foot from the tile floor. He rubbed his right leg and smiled feebly, watching her gape. For him, this reunion was more ironic than awkward.

"You," Cuddy said, choking. Strangling the chart, her eyes darted down, improvising.

"You're here for leg pain."

She was standing a continent away from him. If he could have felt anything other than agony, he'd have told her he needed her so much closer.

"Greg," she tried then connected first to last. "House."

He saw her recognition of the name, but clutched at his thigh, grimaced, before she could ask.

"When did the pain start?"

"Ninth hole." Then, "1:30."

"No previous injury to the leg, trauma today, even minor?"

"No. Nothing."

She stalled, trying to understand the unlikely confluence of coincidences.

"Give me something for the pain," he begged gruff, his teeth gritted.

Nodding idly, Cuddy was concerned as much about the pain as the possibility of him being an addict.

"Take off your pants," she insisted, clinical but hoping he didn't have a comeback.

He complied without protest and she bent to examine the leg, knocking the rubber hammer against his knee.

"Decreased reflexes in the patellar tendon. Means it's most likely muscular- skeletal. I'll call an orthopedic consult."

---

Following the consult, most of which he'd spent eve's dropping on the patient's symptoms and doctor's misdiagnosis in the next room, House met the girl in the waiting room, holding a prescription that only placated.

"It's not a yeast infection. It's VD!" He felt the need to shout.

Cuddy witnessed his outburst and tore the chart from the consulting physician's hands, leading House back into her office.

"The consult came back clean. No sprain or fracture, dislocation, arthritis or bruising," she said, still reading the notes.

"I'm ordering a full blood count. PT, APTT, Fibrinogen"

"You're thinking DVT."

"Maybe. Or an aneurysm. If the D-dimer comes back normal, you're getting

an MRI."

"Here," she said, handing him two pain pills.

A nurse drew blood and Cuddy had it pushed to the front of the formidable stack in the lab. She was doing more than exercising her dominion as Dean. It was almost an obligation. He saw her first and the more she tried to paper over that night, the more it replayed in her mind. It could have been worse. It could still be more.

---

"You're my attending," House said after the MRI, his voice level now that the pain had subsided from an 11 to an 8.

"It was an aneurysm that clotted, leading to an infarction. But we caught it early, there's no necrosis. We remove the clot and you'll make tee time by Sunday morning."

He nodded, signing the consent form.

"Thank you."

Cuddy beamed, almost as relieved as her patient.

"The surgery is minimally invasive. There's an endovascular technique that allows covered metallic stent grafts to be inserted through the arteries of the leg and deployed across the aneurysm. A nurse will be in to prep you soon. "

She'd bumped three surgeries for his. Not that it wasn't justifiable. As she walked away, Cuddy realized she was happier now than she'd been in a long time. It felt like a personal victory, unless she was deluding herself. She saved his leg, not his life and after he was discharged she'd probably never see him again.

For a while longer though, their epilogue wasn't so bleak.

---

"I was thinking we should move in together."

Cuddy sighed incredulous. He read it as a yes.

Their love story should have ended there.

"You're breaking the rules," she told him, bluffing. She knew she was

no referee.

"You broke them first. You didn't leave in the middle of night, didn't dress and slip out while I snored. You didn't regret it."

He was afraid she did now.

"I was going to order room service. Breakfast in bed. Something," his voice trailed off.

"Find out where we went from there."

Cuddy wavered, trying not to appear so transparent or touched but not knowing why was he trying to sentimentalize the insignificant.

"You're going to need to stay off your feet for a few days. We'll give you crutches, or a cane." clearing her throat.

"Let me take you to dinner."

"No."

"A movie then."

She shook her head.

"Monster truck rally?"

"No."

"I'm not trying to get in your pants. Again. This isn't some futile crush. We started something. I just want a chance to see where it goes."

A nurse came in then, handing Cuddy the chart of the patient sharing the room with House and whispering worried about some discrepancy.

"That doesn't make sense." Cuddy said to the sheet of paper.

"It does if it's not ALS. It's Kennedy's disease.

"How do you know––"

"He's going to need an endocrinologist."

She scribbled an order for a genetic test to confirm Kennedy's and wasn't sure if she was impressed or put off by his certainty.

"What are you doing in Jersey anyway?"

"Staying at the Hyatt across from University Center," he proffered flirtatiously. She'd seen the key and room number when she sifted through his backpack to find out if he was holding narcotics, or married for that matter.

"A buddy of mine said he'd try to get me in at Princeton General. He lied."

It made sense now. They were just two doctors in the same hotel in the same city for the same conference. She was there representing this place and he was there to bribe or blackmail himself into another job.

"You know, this place could use a diagnostics department."

"Get some rest, House," Cuddy deflected, for now.

"You'll be out of here in the morning."

---

On the third day House was discharged.

Discharged but not gone.

Morning came and went and when Cuddy made her rounds back to her office, he was sitting behind her desk, clean shaven and waiting for her. She couldn't tell whether he was mulishly quixotic or no better than a junkie jonesing for a fix.

"The cafeteria here makes a damn good reuben," he said, chomping and splattering mustard all over her desk calendar.

"Have a bite."

"What are you doing?" She asked, shaking her head confused.

"Don't worry, it's not a date. It's a job interview."

"I'm not looking to hire," she retorted quickly.

A long silence stretched between them, familiar.

"You went to Michigan," he said wistful, wiping crumbs from the corner of his mouth and motioning to the framed degree hung proud on her wall.

"So did you."

From then on it would always be their collegiate alibi. They'd fabricate their history–– he finished years before she was accepted, she only knew him as a legend–– but one night lacked the poeticism of wandering youth racing toward the same tomorrow.

Cuddy walked closer, he swallowed. House knew she was the one to exhume his heart from the grave, just not how to say it.

"You should hire me."

"Four hospitals fired you."

Flattered she'd done her research over the last two days, he paused a beat.

"I could make a difference here. Find zebras when all your other doctors think they're sending horses home."

She knew House was right, but she also knew that guising what might be an inopportune accident (or the love of her life) as an asset to her hospital would be her own undoing.

"You have a reputation House."

He was the best. Obscenely unorthodox, but the best.

"What if you pull the same stunts here that you did in Florida, or Philadelphia, or Ann Arbor?"

What if you love me and it ruins everything.

"My ass is on the line here. They'd fire me for hiring you."

Her feigned self interest he knew was defensive naiveté. She was sacrificing so much as a way to preserve the dissolute ephemeron they shared days ago.

"I want you." To leave was supposed to come next. Cuddy's voice failed her, so he stood, whole and healthy, ready to start a fight or take her then and there, bent over the desk, or slow and steady in her leather chair.

"Go, House. Please."

Incapable of deciding whether the great wall she was building between them was deliberate and impenetrable or only intended to make her eventual surrender more momentous, he left without another word.

It was dusk when he stammered uneven into his hotel. The scotch bottle by the nightstand was beckoning though his leg hardly hurt. She confiscated the greater part of his soul the first time she kissed him––held it that entire night and never really let go.

Now the room was too quiet, his blood too still.

_**till the next time**_

Leaving behind her lonely office, lost in all the mistakes the people on her payroll make, Cuddy drove the short way to the Hyatt. His unrealized possibilities had infiltrated hers. She saw what he could be and knew who he was and her indecision would only leave them both miserable.

In the elevator her doubts were quelled. Tonight they would keep their clothes on, play the role of professionals. She knew what it would cost her and she knew it was the only choice.

A knock on the door and he answered and neither could escape the déja vu.

"Change of heart, or are you just here for a quickie before I skip town?"

She sighed loud, exasperated, then stepped past the brief threshold of the present and into their future, together.

"Just because I hire you doesn't mean I won't fire you."

"Pithy."

"Every case you take, every test you run, goes through me."

"Bossy and beautiful. I'd invite you back to my room, but you're

already here," even in her presence, he pined for her.

"And you're going to work the clinic at least fifteen hours a week," she continued.

He nodded in elated disbelief.

"Start looking for an apartment in Princeton."

The golf shorts he was still wearing covered the bandaged sutures enough but at the sight of her turning to walk away he panicked and dashed toward the door, wincing.

"Lise."

Hearing him finally say her name, she envisioned House in cufflinks and a cravat, and wondered if he'd lisp when he said Lisa, taking vows. Immediately she suppressed the fantasy, but like every other intention it backfired so that all she could see was him in cufflinks and a cravat.

"And us?" His voice fell low, sank into her breast; she was already sorry for what she was about to say.

"There is no us if I hire you."

That was the concession. The choice clamped his heart in a vice.

"I don't want this to end, " he murmured, his voice breaking with regret.

Then his palm cradled her cheek and House rested his forehead against hers.

Cuddy knew he loved her, no matter how unethical or inexpressible. Guilt gleamed in her eyes, she wanted to take it back, apologize. There was nothing she could do but kiss him. Her lips on his told him better than all her stumbling words.

The touch sealed their fate when her hands framed his face. He tasted like scotch and summer and aftershave. This was what it was like without the abrasion and the complications and all she could think was why not sooner, a different destiny, born out of more than restless anonymity.

On his left leg he leaned heavy, arms tightening as he lifted her off her feet and nothing else mattered, not gravity or the irresolution or their relationship only the indelible truth that they belonged together.

"Goodnight," she whispered, grounded again and backing away from him.

The door shut quietly and House stood a moment, brooding by himself.

This goodnight, he knew, was no goodbye.


End file.
